Burning off the Crust: New Laser Treatment Used to Clean Frescoes in Rome’s Largest 1600-year-old Catacomb Complex

Ancient Origins

Formerly blacked-out frescoes and ancient graffiti in some of Italy’s largest catacombs have been revealed using laser and scanner technology. Restorers, employed by the Vatican, have unveiled frescoes from the time of ancient Rome, depicting some of the most famous Bible stories alongside pagan images - all representing the life to come.

 The Catacombs of St. Domitilla house about 150,000 tombs in an underground maze in Rome. The paintings have been covered in grime, dust and smoke since the Roman Empire still ruled much of the world. The remarkable restoration has been carried out by the Pontifical Commission of Sacred Archaeology.

17th Century Discovery
The project has revealed paintings that had been covered for centuries, and also graffiti of the Maltese lawyer, Antonio Bosio, who rediscovered them in the 17th century. Antonio Bosio thought all the tombs were of martyrs, but they only included the tombs of the martyrs Nereus and Achilleus. Bosio wrote his name on some of the paintings in charcoal.

 Bosio was called the Christopher Columbus of the Catacombs, says a story about the underground networks on CatholicPhilly.com.

CatholicPhilly.com’s article says of the frescoes:
Pagan symbolism, such as depictions of the four seasons or a peacock representing the afterlife, together with biblical scenes are integrated without contradiction, [Barbara] Mazzei said. The unifying motif is salvation and the deliverance from death as is underlined by the varied depictions of Noah in his ark welcoming back the dove, Abraham’s aborted sacrifice of Isaac, Jonah and the whale, and the multiplication of the fishes and loaves, she said.

The whale spits out Jonah in a fresco unveiled this week in the huge Roman Christian Catacombs of St. Domitilla. (CNS photo/Carol Glatz)

Lifting The Black Veil
Ms. Mazzei is the director of renovation project. She said the catacombs have 70 burial chambers, called cubicula, but her team restored just 10 of them. She told The Telegraph:

 ‘When we started work, you couldn’t see anything – it was totally black. Different wavelengths and chromatic selection enabled us to burn away the black disfiguration without touching the colors beneath. Until recently, we weren’t able to carry out this sort of restoration – if we had done it manually we would have risked destroying the frescoes.’

A tunnel showing some of the crypts built into the walls of the Catacombs of St. Domitilla (Dennis Jarvis/Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0)

The modern technology used to restore the catacomb’s paintings is better than using conventional methods because they could have been damaged in the process and taken years. The team intends to restore more of the crypts in the underground warrens.

These are Rome’s oldest underground burial sites and were in use from the 2nd century AD until the 9th century. Then they were abandoned. The remains of the 150,000 people are buried in 17 kilometers (10.5 miles) of tunnels or rooms on four levels. The renovations were in the larger rooms, the burial sites for the rich and elite, says an article about the project on IFL Science.

Decorated for Bakers
This renovation work was carried out on the tombs of some of the city’s ancient bakers, says CatholicPhilly. They got rich with a state-supported trade of wheat and bread-baking that benefited people because Rome gave everyone a daily ration.

Bernardino Bertocci attended the unveiling this week to signify that bakers were and still are a vital part of Roman life. Bread, of course, is one of the most important Christian symbols as Jesus broke bread with his disciples during the Last Supper the night before he was beaten, scourged and crucified.

Top image: In this fresco, Jesus is shown seated on a throne with his disciples at hand. The painting is in the Catacombs of St. Domitilla in Rome, which have been newly restored. (CNS photo/Carol Glatz)

By Mark Miller

Archaeologists Discover Paintings of Ancient Egypt in a 2,000-Year-Old Villa in Pompeii

Ancient Origins

A team of archaeologists have discovered impressive paintings of Ancient Egypt in a Roman villa in Pompeii. The portraits clearly show the vast influence the Egyptian culture had in early Roman society. Experts speculate that some of the paintings could possibly underscore an early form of Globalization.

 Drawings Show Strong Egyptian Influence on Early Rome Daily Mail reports that paintings portraying the River Nile were found in a beautiful garden in a luxurious ancient villa in Pompeii. Experts are optimistic that these paintings will reveal a lot of secrets on how the early Roman Empire was influenced by ancient Egypt.

Complex drawings from Casa dell'Efebo – one of the largest households in the city before it was severely damaged during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 – present a series of Nilotic murals with hippopotamuses, crocodiles, lotuses and short-statured men battling with vicious beasts.

Painting of a short-statured man fighting a beast (CC by SA 3.0)

Caitlin Barrett from the department of Classics at Cornell University claimed that the drawings give the house a cosmopolitan touch and outlines how the Romans were influenced by the ancient Egyptian culture such as religion. “The paintings from the Casa dell'Efebo were created after Egypt was incorporated into the Roman Empire, but several generations after Augustus' initial conquest of Egypt. Some researchers have turned to explanations emphasizing religion: maybe paintings of Egyptian landscapes have to do with an interest in Egyptian gods,” she told IBTimes of UK. And added, “Others have interpreted these paintings as political statements: maybe this is about celebrating the conquest of Egypt. I suggest that instead of trying to apply a one-size-fits-all explanation, we should look at context and individual choices.”

Sexual Activity is Present Regardless the Political and Cultural Focus of the Paintings
It’s no secret that Pompeii was famous for its intense sexual life and wild parties. As a result of this lifestyle, many paintings discovered from that era are extremely graphic, including strong doses of excessive sexual content. Let’s not forget that when the city was rediscovered in 1599, the city became buried again (thanks to censorship) for nearly another 150 years before the king of Naples, Charles of Bourbon, ordered the proper excavation of the site during the late 1740s. As DHWTY reports in a previous Ancient Origins article, despite the erotic nature of these images, it has been suggested that they were merely an idealized version of sex. Thus, it has been postulated that the lives of the prostitutes at the most famed bordello in Pompeii, Lupanare, was far grimmer than the erotic images suggest. So, it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that the main theme of the recently discovered paintings is sex and alcohol consumption.

A fresco found within one of Pompeii’s brothels. Source: BigStockPhoto

Paintings Could Underscore a Form of Globalization
Despite the obvious themes of the paintings, Barrett also argues that they could underscore how the Romans interacted with the outside world; thus a form of globalization. The study, which was published in the American Journal of Archaeology, appears to share its views with Barrett’s suggestions and also proclaims that artifacts discovered around the garden of the household and the building’s elaborate architecture such as water installations mimic the diverse nature of the Roman Empire. Barrett stated as Daily Mail reports, “In this particular assemblage, rather than solely trying to make some kind of statement about Isiac rituals or Roman politics, the owner of this house seems to be asserting a cosmopolitan identity as a citizen of the Empire. In Pompeian houses at this time, when people are representing faraway lands in domestic art, they are also trying to figure out what it means to them to be participants in the Roman Empire.”

Representations of sexual activity, music and alcohol consumption are often central to these paintings (CC by SA 3.0)

The study adds that the paintings of the Nile in the Pompeian villa provided its owners with a unique chance to come in contact with shifting local and imperial Roman identities and to reproduce a microcosm of the world they lived in, “People sometimes imagine phenomena like globalization to be creations of the modern world. In fact, if you look at the Roman Empire there are lots of parallels for some of the cross-cultural interactions that are also very much part of our own contemporary world” the researcher of the study concludes at the end.

Top image: Painting of a scene around the River Nile in Egypt, found in Casa dell'Efebo (CC by SA 4.0)

By Theodoros Karasavvas